“I haven’t paid much attention to it,” Ethan said.
“Listen.”
They halted, still holding the corpse. A third rocket went off above them, brightening the fortress like summer lightning and drawing more cheers. Even after the singing commenced once more, it took Ethan a moment to make out the tune. When he did, he shook his head and chuckled. The men were singing “Yankee Doodle,” which British soldiers had been using to mock colonial militia since the Seven Years’ War.
Ethan couldn’t help thinking that the regulars seemed rather full of themselves. But he kept this to himself. He nodded once, signaling to Rickman that they should begin walking again. Rockets continued to burst overhead, and the singing and cheers drifted across the grounds from the harbor.
One last time they descended the steep stone stairs that led into the vaults, barely trusting their footing in the inconstant light of the torches that lined the stairway.
When at last they set down this last man, Ethan straightened and stretched the stiff muscles in his back and shoulders. The air belowground was even colder than it had been above. It was damp as well, but Ethan thought it likely that the bodies would keep longer in the vaults than anywhere else they might have been placed.
“I meant no offense,” Rickman said.
Ethan looked at him. “I beg your pardon?”
The doctor was tall and hale with a kindly, round face and piercing dark eyes. His features were youthful, but his curly hair, which he wore far shorter than was the fashion in Boston, had already turned white.
“I didn’t mean to anger you by pointing out what the men were singing,” the doctor explained.
Ethan shook his head. “You didn’t.” He retrieved the ship’s manifest from a low stone ledge where he had placed it some time before and began to walk down the narrow corridor of the vault, looking over the bodies. He could hear more rockets going off, although down underground the explosions sounded muffled and dull. He couldn’t hear the singing anymore. “Do you know many of these men?”
“Hardly any of them.” The doctor spoke softly in an accent that marked him as a native of southern England, perhaps Southampton or Portsmouth. “Last I heard, Captain Gell intended to ask some of the officers from the Twenty-ninth Regiment to join us here and help identify them.” He eyed Ethan in the torchlight. “Lieutenant Senhouse asked me to examine the men, but he still hasn’t asked me what killed them. The crewmen did, but not William. Neither have you, for that matter. Why is that?”
“I’ve been carrying the dead for hours, Doctor. As grim a task as that was I didn’t wish to make it worse. But you’ve raised the matter so why don’t you tell me what you think killed them.”
Rickman shook his head. “I have no idea. And what’s more, I don’t believe you. I think you do know, or at least can offer a theory. So before the officers arrive why don’t we dispense with the games? Tell me what happened to these men.”
Ethan didn’t answer right away. He should have denied that he knew anything, but something in the doctor’s manner stopped him. The man seethed with passion, with a righteousness that Ethan remembered from his own youth. In truth, Rickman reminded Ethan of another young man he knew-Trevor Pell, a minister at King’s Chapel who had first helped him with his work several years before when Ethan was inquiring into the death of Jennifer Berson. He wondered if Rickman would accept that Ethan was a conjurer, as had Pell.
Before he could say anything, though, he heard boots scraping on the stone stairs leading into the vault. He looked back at the entrance, and Rickman turned as well.
Two men stepped into the vault, both wearing bright red uniforms. One of the men appeared to be in his early twenties-a young officer, who looked at the bodies arrayed before him with an expression of abject fear. His eyes twitched; it seemed that he was continually fighting the urge to close them and shut out the horror before him. His skin looked pasty, even in the warm light of the torches.
The other man couldn’t have been more different. He was tall and broad in the shoulders. Some might have thought him handsome, though Ethan thought he looked more rough than refined, with a long nose, a strong chin, sunken cheeks, and widely spaced pale eyes. He wore his graying hair in a plait beneath his tricorn hat, a hat which he did not remove even here, in the presence of so many dead soldiers. His eyes swept over the bodies and came to rest at last on the doctor.
“Captain Gell sent me,” he said, his voice thick with an Irish burr. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me why, Doctor.”
“I’d suggest you look around you, Captain,” Rickman answered, his tone icy. “These men are the reason why.”
The officer’s mouth twitched. “I can see that. But what is it you require of me?”
“Captain Preston, this is Ethan Kaille,” the doctor said. “He is a thieftaker here in Boston, and is conducting an inquiry into the deaths of these men. All of them are from your regiment and one of them is missing. We need to match faces to names and see if we can determine which man escaped the fate of his comrades.”
To this point, Preston had ignored Ethan, but he fixed his eyes upon him now, a faint smile on his lips. “A thieftaker?” he said. “You think these men were robbed?”
Ethan stared back at him. “Yes. Of their lives, at the very least.”
The smile faded from the captain’s face. “All right. Let’s get started, then. I want to get back to my soldiers. The rest of them…” he amended after a brief, awkward pause.
“By all means,” Rickman muttered, just loud enough for Ethan to hear. “We wouldn’t want to inconvenience the man.”
Chapter Seven
Captain Preston’s manner might have been gruff, but he worked with swift efficiency, as did the young corporal he had brought with him. They moved down the line of dead soldiers, peering at their faces and, after a bit of deliberation, assigning a name to each one. Dr. Rickman held the manifest and checked off names as the officers worked. Ethan trailed behind them, feeling that with the bodies arrayed in the vaults his work here was complete.
Watching the other men, though, Ethan had an idea. He would have been best off waiting until he was alone with the dead soldiers, but he couldn’t be certain that such an opportunity would present itself.
“Veni ad me,” he whispered as quietly as he could. Come to me.
His conjuring sang in the stone walls and the ground beneath his feet, and Uncle Reg winked into view at his side, his russet glow almost bloodlike in the dim space.
Preston glanced Ethan’s way. “What did you say?” he asked. He gave no indication that he could see Reg or that he had felt Ethan’s conjuring.
“It was … a prayer,” Ethan said.
Reg grinned. The captain went back to examining the dead, but Rickman eyed Ethan for another moment. As soon as the doctor turned his attention to the manifest once more, Ethan looked toward the glowing ghost.
I need to know if any of these men were conjurers, he said within his mind. Do you understand me?
Reg nodded and began to drift back along the corridor past the bodies that had already been identified. A short distance from the stairway, he halted, hovering beside the body of a regular. He stared back at Ethan, his eyes gleaming in the shadows. Ethan could hardly believe that the ghost had found someone. He had thought this a lark.
You’re sure? he asked in his mind, as he approached the dead soldier.
Reg nodded to him and drifted off once more.
Stopping by the soldier Reg had indicated, Ethan looked down at the man. He was a large, young man with a broad fleshy face and long black hair.
“Can you tell me this man’s name?” Ethan asked, still looking down at him.
“We’ve got him already,” Preston said.
“Yes, I know. What was his name?”